Young Blood (PART ONE OF THREE)

End of the Line

2. End of the Line

Carter flew around the building, looking through each window carefully, as to not get caught. She peered through and once again found another empty room. Apparently the entire fifth floor of the newest Agency building was still under construction, or just deserted.

She looked down at the ground and waved the signal for 'empty' down to a red haired girl standing nonchalantly on the ground. The red head nodded and headed inside.

Mandy, which was her name. She opened the glass doors like they were the doors leading inside to the mall. But no, they led in to hell.

When she walked in to the building, her nostrils were filled with the scent of fresh paint and lots of disinfectant. She shoved her hands in to her jean pockets and approached the front desk.

"Hi, I'm Mandy Erickson. I have an appointment," She said to the woman sitting there typing frantically on her computer.

Without even looking at Mandy, she handed her a folder nearly overflowing with papers. "Third floor, room 209."

Mandy gulped. This was a suicide mission, at best. And she'd willingly done this because....? She was insane, that’s why.

Before she began to walk away she had a brilliant idea. She looked over at the woman and grinned, "Hey, you look stressed out. Promise me you'll relax within the next few minutes and stop freaking out?"

The woman just nodded, "I promise."

A voice in the back of Mandy's head laughed. 'Good girl', it hissed. 'She's most definitely dead meat.'

Mandy knew for sure that when she returned the woman would be collapsed on the floor, dead as a rock. Mandy loved her power. It was called the Reaper's Promise. With the help of a god of death, if she was to make someone promise her something and they broke the promise, they would die. It was great, and lots of fun sometimes.

Mandy turned back around and headed for the elevator. Once inside she pressed the button for the third floor, and the elevator began to move up. She pressed the emergency break and looked around for cameras. In the corner a little security camera face the door, and Mandy pulled it from its perch and jumped on it to crush it.

She sat down next to the broken camera and opened up the folder the woman from before had given her.

It was labeled “Woodland High Students-Special”. She wondered what the difference was between this and the folder without “Special” written on it. Once she opened the folder she found a few files for specific students, she didn’t recognize any of them, and there wasn’t much of a difference between them and any other student. Mandy frowned and flipped through all the paper work and found a page with a scanned picture of someone’s hand written poem. The writing was nearly illegible, but written next to it in an empty space someone had written it out in nice writing.

Mandy realized that the poem was describing each student in the folder, and somehow they were supposed to stop the Agency. Or, at least, that’s what she had taken from it. It was the kind of poetry that the real meaning had about a thousand little things branching off of it.

It’s almost like a prophecy, she noted. She began to fold the picture of the poem in her pocket and then a few other papers. Her phone buzzed in her jacket and she looked at it. It was a text from Carter asking if she was okay.

Mandy decided to call her instead of text and the phone didn’t even ring once before Carter answered. “I’m fine,” Mandy said. “I found some interesting paper work, but I’m not sure if I should leave the same way I came in. I had to give the woman in the front my real name and I’m sure she entered it into the system log that I’d given her a nice little visit.”

“Really? I figured you would’ve killed her by now.”

“I never said I hadn’t made a promise with her she couldn’t keep.”

There was laughter from Carter, and then she suddenly stopped laughing.

“What?” Mandy demanded.

“Mandy, there is a bunch of Agent’s pulling up in vans. You’ve gotta get out of there, and fast.”

Mandy groaned and hung up the phone. She let the elevator go up again and she peered out in to the third floor hallway. In front of her was a window giving a nice view of New York, and to her left and right were rows of rooms.

There was no way she was going to that room the woman had mentioned. She had to get out of the building-as soon as possible.

She took one step out of the elevator and the alarms burst through her head and suddenly groups of men in black suits were surrounding her. She looked to her sides, then at the window and frowned. Three stories…was there even a chance of survival?

Maybe she could get Carter to catch her. Reaching slowly in to her pocket she called Carter back and began to speak to the Agents when she knew Carter had answered.

“Well, boys, it’s a shame, but I should really get going.” She kicked the glass and it shattered, then once more and the window fell apart. Before she jumped she glanced over the edge and was horrified.

What she saw was Carter tied up at her wrists and ankles, her wings badly damaged with feathers torn out, and a man grinning up at Mandy holding Carter's phone next to his ear. He waved.

Mandy turned back around to face the Agents heading toward her. One pulled a gun from his pocket, aimed, and fired.

As the bullet buried itself in her arm, she lost her balance and fell.